Sacred values and resource scarcity create an irreconcilable tension in social life.

Evidence

This article summarizes an emerging body of research that explores how people cope – cognitively and emotionally – with a fundamental contradiction of social life. The contradiction can take diverse forms but its canonical form can be stated simply. On the one hand, as economists frequently remind us, we live in a world of scarce resources in which, like it or not, everything must ultimately take on an implicit or explicit price . Indeed, this austere insight prompted Oscar Wilde to define an economist as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. On the other hand, sociological observers point out that people often insist with apparently great conviction that certain commitments and relationships are sacred and that even to contemplate trade-offs with the secular values of money or convenience is anathema . In the social world inhabited by most readers of this journal, to be caught calculating the opportunity costs of one’s family or professional integrity or loyalty to one’s country is to reveal that one ‘just does not get it’ – that one simply does not understand what it means to participate in these rule-governed forms of social life in the roles of parent/ spouse, scientist or citizen. — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 2

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the core distinction between sacred values and secular price-trade-off thinking that anchors the whole paper.
• XREF: connects to: Reducing sacred values to material ones worsens conflict; Life and its cultural forms are fundamentally in tension — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 837; Religious ritual converts secular values into sacred ones that harden conflict (+9 more)

Related

• Sacred values resist tradeoffs because communities set them apart as nonfungible moral imperatives. (similarity 0.87)
• Sacralized values resist material incentives and cause offer-driven concessions to backfire (similarity 0.84)
• Elites can sway people by reframing sacred values as secular tradeoffs. (similarity 0.84)
• Sacred values resist material incentives and are best countered only by rival sacred values. (similarity 0.83)
• Material incentives harden sacred-value conflicts while symbolic gestures soften them (similarity 0.82)
• Offering material incentives for sacred-value compromises backfires and increases hostility (similarity 0.82)
• Sacred values resist cost-benefit correction unlike ordinary preferences (similarity 0.81)
• Material offers to resolve sacred-value conflicts backfire and increase violence, while symbolic concessions work. (similarity 0.81)
• Sacred values’ interpretive ambiguity allows peace-oriented reframing (similarity 0.81)
• Reducing sacred values to material ones worsens conflict (similarity 0.81)
• Ritual participation plus perceived threat converts disputed preferences into sacred values. (similarity 0.80)
• Sacred values and identity fusion interact to drive sacrificial self-interest. (similarity 0.80)
• Material incentives for relinquishing sacred values backfire and harden resistance (similarity 0.80)
• Sacred values can form quickly through ritual and perceived group threat. (similarity 0.80)
• Sacred-value commitment produces costly sacrifice that lets weak groups beat stronger foes. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Reducing sacred values to material ones worsens conflict #expands (0.90)
• Religious ritual converts secular values into sacred ones that harden conflict #expands (0.90)
• Life and its cultural forms are fundamentally in tension #corroborates (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 837
• Ritual participation plus perceived threat converts disputed preferences into sacred values. #expands (0.85) — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 58
• Religion drives conflict through monitoring, bonding, and sacralized values that block compromise. #expands (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 523
• Sacred values’ interpretive ambiguity allows peace-oriented reframing #complicates (0.85)
• External threat drives groups to ritualize preferences into sacred values #expands (0.85) — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 14
• Offering material incentives for sacred-value compromises backfires and increases hostility #corroborates (0.85) — Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict, 67
• The tension between life and form drives cultural change. #corroborates (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 820
• Material incentives backfire on sacred values while symbolic recognition softens opposition. #qualifies (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 547
• Sacred values and identity fusion interact to drive sacrificial self-interest. #expands (0.80) — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor, 9
• Merely contemplating trade-offs on sacred values provokes moral outrage beyond cognitive confusion #corroborates (0.80) — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 12